Hal Duncan, page 36
¯ Something bad happened here, says Puck. I'm telling you.
I'm not convinced about that. For all that the wreckage in the earth is so often blackened and burned, twisted or broken out of shape, there may be no more catastrophe here than in any common or garden rubbish dump. There are a number of possibilities that Puck refuses to consider. Oblivion's Mount rises over us, still far ahead but just a little more to our right ¯ north by north-east instead of simply north ¯ and for all of its scale, its shape is more than a little reminiscent of the tells common in areas of ancient civilisation where towns have been built over the ruins of towns and gradually accreted in layers over centuries until, eventually abandoned and buried by the winds, they lump there on the horizon, broad, buried masses waiting for archaeologists to mine for knowledge. Well... its shape is not quite right, but if you were to take one of those plains and build towns between the tells and let them live and die the same way until the plain was filled and turned into a plateau, and build towns on top of that plateau and go on and on and on, towering tell on top of tell, then maybe what you would be left with, after an eternity or so, is Oblivion's Mount.
I try to explain this to Puck, but after his yawning, rolling his eyes, twiddling his fingers, kicking his heels, shifting his weight from foot to foot, swinging his arms at his side, picking dirt out from under his fingernails, playing with his hair, and finally checking the time on an entirely imaginary wristwatch, all within my first sentence, I give up with an exasperated sigh and offer an alternative explanation.
¯ It's probably just one big landfill, I say. Eternity's garbage. The Happy Dumping Ground In The Sky.
¯ Bollocks, says Puck, something bad happened here ¯ and he goes back to trying to yank the bush out of the ground ¯ Look at Jack, he says.
Jack sits on the ground maybe a hundred yards away, arms hugged around his knees, eyes scanning the skies absently as if watching a fly, but glancing every now and then at Puck, with the furtive, nervous intensity of a guilty dog. It was Jack that led us here in the first place with his ungodly howling, and he seems to have convinced Puck, with his fevered bursts of clawing at the ground followed by sudden panicked sprints to cower at a safe distance, that there is some terrible secret buried under the bush. Or as Puck puts it, that something bad happened here.
¯ Give us a hand, then, eh? says Puck.
I join him at his bush and push one arm through the thick of leaves and twigs to get a backhand grip on a fatter branch, scuffle my feet into a lodging scrunch of dirt and, on the count of three, we heft.
¯ One, two, three, hnnnh. One two, three, hnnnh.
There's a creak on the third heave, a crack on the fourth, and by the fifth the dirt is rustling as the roots lift through it, pulling up in a clump of twists untangling. I'm suddenly reminded of unpotting a neglected bonsai; I recognise the feel of pulling roots out of the wire mesh they've grown through, the teasing, tearing feel, like pulling a comb through matted hair. A final heave rips the bush free but for a few thick roots at the side we're pulling from, free enough for us to see what's under it and confirm my suspicion.
The bush has sprouted in the dirt blown over a thin film of plastic bag, snagged, at some point in the past, on the sharp steel of grillework over a drain of some sorts, the roots of the bush eventually bursting through the bag and working their way down through the mesh. It's all quite mundane, if it wasn't for the skulls piled one on top of the other, filling the hole in the ground like marbles in a jar.
I have to admit that yes, well, maybe something bad did happen here.
The Tavern
¯ You never talk about him, says Don.
¯ What's the point? she says, pushing the door open.
Voices quiet for a second as they enter, hoods shadowing their faces, raincapes cloaking their forms. Faces turn to scope these shadowy strangers like, she thinks, the locals in a western saloon or a horror movie inn. Questers in a fantasy epic entering the tavern. Templars on some grand secret mission to the Holy Land, stopping off at a hostelry and reticent to reveal the shining armour beneath their cloaks. With their disrupters ¯ the six-foot chi-lances, part crossbow, part spear, part rifle ¯ they even look the part. Apart from the fact that their raincapes are waterproof synthe and the armour underneath is biker leathers, Phreedom thinks. Apart from the fact that the only destination they have in sight is away. Away from reality. Away from the unkin. Away from the bitmites. Just plain fucking away.
But as far as they go, they never quite seem to get away. That's the problem with the Vellum; when time has three dimensions you can drive whole decades only to find yourself back at the day you started from, or at least a day just like it.
¯ Come on, she says.
She flicks back her hood and Don does the same. The locals turn back to their beer and conversation, satisfied now that the two of them have clicked into the role of mysterious strangers. Gazes flick across at them from here and there, now and then, but Phreedom knows that's how the game works, how the ritual runs. It's a scenario they've played a thousand times on their journey into the Vellum. She scans the room for the big lunk who'll come on to her as she's ordering at the bar, force a fight and get creamed. She scopes out the local moneyman sat at the booth at the back of the tavern, all gold jewellery and immaculate suit, surrounded by his goons; Latin American drug lord, Wild West cattle baron, ghetto pimp or goodfella, there's always some villain with a story all curled-up and packed tight into the situation they walk into, just waiting for the catalyst to unfurl it, the drifter. Her and Don sometimes run a book on how long before the moneyman tries to hire them or run them out of town.
¯ Fifteen minutes, says Don. What do you reckon?
¯ One, says Phreedom.
Don points at an empty table ¯ rough-hewn wood with benches instead of seats, it would look more at home in the picnic area of a park than in this tavern, but then the whole place has a slapdash quality like so many places they've hit as they get further out; the booths at the back are formica, with padded leatherette seats like a diner, the bar is oak and brass, saloon-style, but there are tables with waxed cloth covers, broad-checked like some little European cafe, empty wine bottles used as candleholders or with flowers in them. Sawdust covers a mosaic floor. Neon behind the bar and gas-lamps on the walls. TVs in the corners hanging from the ceiling. A weirdass piano on a raised stage over to one side ¯ a mechanical contraption somewhere between baby grand and player piano, its cylinder turns as it plink-plonks out a murderous version of 'My Way'. The past is the new future, she thinks. Tomorrow is so last year.
She nods and, as Don slides down onto the bench, she flicks her raincape back to dig out her wallet.
¯ One minute? says Don.
She grins.
¯ Time me.
Five seconds. She's at the bar, asking for two beers and sliding in at the spot right beside the big guy, the big, drunk lunk in the leisure suit who checks her out as she pushes in, looks her up and down then grins at his friends over at the back, the ones around the moneyman. Eight, nine, ten seconds. He's turning to leer at her.
¯ Hey there, pretty¯
She hits him, fist full in the face, breaking his nose and sending blood spraying down over his tache and white shirt, flicks her ruptor from left hand into right and does a little Bruce Lee twirl that smacks him across the cheek with it and leaves her standing there, legs spread, ruptor out and horizontal, aimed right at the booth at the back where he's going down into a slump at the feet of the money-man's chief stooge. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. The moneyman looks down at the red wine dribbling off the table and into his lap, the glass rolling on its side. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. His chair scrapes back and the goons close in in front of him, blocking her shot, and reaching for their own weapons. She smiles, shrugs, flips the ruptor back to vertical and puts her other hand up, palm forward. Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine. She turns away from them, slowly and deliberately shouldering the ruptor and picking up the two beers, one in either hand. They have a little side-bet, her and Don, on which glass gets shot out of her hand.
Thirty-two. The glass in her left hand explodes. Phreedom smiles.
Thirty-three. She doesn't even bother looking as Don cuts them down from his seat, just asks the bartender for another beer, waits for it, then carries it back to the table.
¯ Forty-one seconds, he says.
¯ Personal best.
She slides onto the bench, props her own ruptor against the table beside Don's. She reaches into a pocket to pull out a smoke but as she brings the lighter up, he takes her hand.
¯ You never talk about him, he says. About either of them.
She pulls her hand away and lights the cigarette.
¯ I can't fucking change what happened, she says. Any of it.
She takes a draw.
¯ I wish I could.
4
The Scythes of Cronos
Peterhead, 1920
Your request has been heard and noted, says the letter, and an answer will be given presently . .. once the full facts of the matter have been ascertained . . . considered to our satisfaction, and more shite like that, but Seamus is too weak to read it now, laying up on the blanketless bed, naked and cold, as sure and he won't wear their fookin convict arrows, and he's exhausted so he is, not from the labouring in the quarry, cause he won't fookin do that neither, but from the endless fookin fighting. His throat sore from the feeding tube forced down it, the rest of his body is still black and blue from all the previous struggles; and the bruises from today are yet to form, of course. He lets the letter from the office of the Home Secretary drop from between his fingers. Fookers. Three months of penal servitude, they call it, in their fancy language. Call it what it is, hard fookin labour, done looking up the barrel of a Civil Guard's Lee Enfield rifle. And he's already two months in. It's the 25th of October.
So he lies there gazing up and back through bars at the pure sky, the paths of birds, wondering if he'll be dead or free before they ever accept that he's no fookin common convict but a political prisoner. Outside there's the sounds of footsteps. A crow circles.
¯ Well, now, ah have to say it makes me right sad to see ye in this state, but.
He looks down at the foot of the bed. It's just one of the boys, Lance-Corporal Donald O'Sheen MacChuill (Irish Catholic mother, Scots Protestant father, Seamus remembers ¯ the Dubs always were a mixed bunch and MacChuill was about the most mixed of the lot of them ¯ spoke Gaelic and knew The Sash by heart and refused to see the contradiction). MacChuill stands there, in his full kit, backpack and helmet, rifle slung over his back, with a stupid big eedjit grin, sure, and the big hole in his face where his right eye used to be, the gaping black-red hole with the hard white shards and soft grey stuff all messed dp in the midst of it. It doesn't scare Seamus any more though, sure, 'cause he knows its just a waking dream and if all the electroshock at Inchgillan didn't do a single thing, well, he did learn something from the doctor, with his talk of that fellow's work over at Craiglockhart and facing your demons, and all that shite. He wasn't a bad sort, after all, that Doctor Reynard. Such a wound, he'd said, such a horrific wound . .. this MacChuill must have died instantly. He couldn't have suffered. I want you to try and keep that in your mind. That he wouldn't have suffered. It was after that that Seamus stopped screaming when MacChuill came visiting.
¯ Ah shite, he says.
Seamus pushes himself upright, shaking his head. So weak he is from the hunger strike and all is what it is, sure, 'cause he hasn't had one of his turns for quite a while now, but what else could it be but one of those fookin waking dreams that used to haunt him so? Jesus, but Seamus hopes that he's not going to start with all the gibberish again, with all the crazy talk that got him his discharge ¯what was it Reynard called it? Glossalalia? Glossadoolallia, more like.
¯ Ah, Christ, he says. What now?
¯ Aw come on, but. Is that any way to talk to yer ole pal, sir, says MacChuill. Ah mean, pardon ma bluntness, but here and I've come a long way just to see ye, riding this swift-winged bird, here, guiding it by ma will alone an a'.
He points at the crow now strutting on the windowledge, watching him, its dark eye glinting with gold sunlight like there's fire in it. Seamus shivers but it's not from the cold, even if he is stark bollock naked. He wishes he had a cigarette, but there's none of that here, not even out of solitary. He wonders if ghost cigarettes still give ye that wee buzz, 'cause sure and he could ask MacChuill. MacChuill always had a spare one, so he did. Smoked like a fookin chimney. Like a reeky lum, he'd say. Didn't they all?
¯ And I suppose yer come to be spectator of me sufferings? Seamus says. Have ye just dropped in to see how I'm doing then, and to offer yer commiserations? That's a fair journey, so it is, lad, coming all the way across the river that carried yer soul away, all the way from the fookin hole in the ground all covered in rocks and dirt, out of the fookin iron mother earth itself, lad. I mean, I hate to tell ye this, son, but yer fookin dead and buried.
He feels a wave of dizziness wash over him, wishes he could just fookin live his life out in the peace of seeing only what is here and now.
¯ Sympathy sent me here, Sarge, so it did. But even if we wurnie brothers, there's naebody I respect more than yersel ¯ Haud on now. Don't be coming out with any of that bollocks. Ye know fine well that what I say is true. Flattery's never been ma strong point.
He walks round to sit on the edge of the mattress beside Seamus, who's almost laughing at the absurdity, so he is, and almost crying.
¯ Aright. It seems to me that ye could be usin a bit of help here, says the ghost. Never let it be said that there's a firmer friend to ye than ole MacChuill.
Visitations, Visions, Voices
Ah Jesus, look at the sight of me, thinks Seamus, all twisted up with sickness.
¯ Some fookin friend I was to you, lad, he says. Friend to the dukes, more like, helping them build their bloody Empire on the broken bodies of...
Seamus looks round at the face in profile, the left side of it, the good side, and he thinks of the lad from some quarrying town on Scotland's west coast. Moved over to Ireland when he was twelve, right into the heart of Dublin, because his mother was homesick and his father, black sheep of the family, didn't give a damn for the Masons and the Orange Lodge that all his brothers wanted him to join with them. MacChuill seemed to have inherited some of that stubborn streak from his old man, kept the gruff accent all his life just to be thrawn. When Seamus first met him, sure and he couldn't understand a word the boy said. And Christ, when he got a few Guinness in him, Jesus, it was like half the fookin letters of the alphabet just didn't exist any more.
¯ Ah know, MacChuill says. Ah know. Yer a wiser man than me by far, Sarge, but ... ah just thought ye could use a wee bit of advice, like.
He turns to face Seamus, full-on, a tentative solemnity in his broken gaze. MacChuill, the eldest of all poor Seamus's ghosts, the first to visit him in the darkness of the dugout, after he woke up and they told him what he'd done, after he'd sat there shaking for hours and hours, looking at the bodies piled in the trench around him, while the captain blethered on about commendations, tragedies and medals. Seamus remembers all the nights of visitations, visions, voices, how he woke up in the dark so many times, seeing MacChuill there with his shattered socket, just like Seamus saw him lying on the battlefield below, and all the others in amongst the craters and the blasted stumps of trees, as Seamus stood there caught, wound up in all the barbs of German wire and ¯ No. Don't think about it.
¯ Ah mean . . . maybe ye want to think of what yer daein here, and get yerself an attitude that's new, because the big man among a' the lords, he's also new, and if ye carry on chucking a' these rude words at the dukes, ye know, as far above ye as they're sitting on their thrones, they're going to hear you ¯ maybe no today but sometime soon ¯ and when they dae, yer present troubles, Sarge, they're going to seem like child's play. Aye, life's no fair, and yours, well, it's just misery, but if ye want release from this despair, ye've got to lay aside this rage.
Seamus tries to stand up, to get away from him. The accent is MacChuill, the language is MacChuill, but there's something in the flow of it, in the rhythm of it, that's not quite right, even for a thing that's not of this world but the next.
¯ Ah know, ah know, I'm sure I seem like a right ole man saying this, but ye know, Sarge, being deid gies ye a whole new way of looking at things.
Seamus tries to stand up, but his legs don't work; even if he tries to push himself up with one hand on the iron-railed head of the bed, all he feels is the cold metal in his palm. His heart is fluttering, his breathing hard. Sure and he's just too weak.
¯ Sarge, says MacChuill, yer hardly what ah'd call the meek and mild type, no a man to gie in to the carrot or the stick, but listen . . . yer too wild, yer tongue's too quick, and this is how yer paid. Ye shouldnae kick against the pricks, unless yer looking for mair pain. Ye know it's a harsh, reckless tyrant reigns.
He lays a hand on Seamus's shoulder, weighted with sympathy.
